- Joined
- Jan 20, 2013
- Messages
- 132
I'm plunging back into working on my shop and mill after a busy summer with too many other distractions. The current project is working on converting my Bridgeport over to using a VFD. I read a bunch and searched a lot, but I didn't find many guides on designing and building the VFD enclosure, so I thought I would document how I am going about doing mine. I'll update this post as I go along with more build details and documentation. Let me know if you guys are interested in anything specific and I'll try to address it. Alright, here goes.
In preparation for this project, I bought a big metal control cabinet off of eBay a couple of weeks ago. This one is 20" wide x 24" tall x 12" deep and had some DIN rail and plastic wireways. It has a bunch of holes I will have to fill, but the price was right. Here it is out of the shipping box with a 6" scale on top:
I started today by cleaning out the enclosure, removing the backpanel and giving everything a wipedown. Then I stripped off all of the parts from the backpanel (DIN rail, wireways, etc.) Paint may come later, but it's not a priority now. I decided I would mount the enclosure to the mill before I did the interior layout and wiring, just to give myself some motivation.
My mill has a ProtoTRAK retrofit and that control cabinet lives on the right side of the mill's base casting, so I decided to put the VFD enclosure on the left side. Plus, that puts it closer to the motor wiring. The base casting doesn't have a large enough flat area on the side to accommodate the enclosure, so I have to build it out with a frame.
I have a stockpile of 80/20 extrusions and fittings, so I figured that would be a great frame. I started with two horizontal sections about 16" long. I drilled four holes in the casting with my hand drill and tapped them. A couple of clearance holes in the 80/20 and those were mounted:
Now I needed to cut down some L brackets that would attach to the vertical sections. I haven't gotten to wiring in my horizontal bandsaw yet, so I grabbed my portaband and used the horizontal's vice. Now I have my L brackets ready to go:
Two 36" vertical sections are next:
Enclosure in place and mounted to the vertical sections:
I punched two holes in the side for the master on button and the emergency kill switch. Mounted them up:
OK, now I'm moving on to the interior layout and wiring. I sketched out my schematic over the last week and have been ordering parts. The easiest way for me to work is to do a layout of all the parts with my schematic next to me, and go back and forth between the two:
Here's how the backpanel is shaping up so far. There is the VFD, braking resistor, enclosure fans, fan relay, thermostat for the fans, fuse holders, terminal blocks, enclosure power contactor and ground bar. I'm missing the VFD's fuses.
That's about as far as I got today. Next up will be mounting everything to the backpanel, mounting fans to the enclosure, mounting the backpanel into the enclosure and wiring.
In preparation for this project, I bought a big metal control cabinet off of eBay a couple of weeks ago. This one is 20" wide x 24" tall x 12" deep and had some DIN rail and plastic wireways. It has a bunch of holes I will have to fill, but the price was right. Here it is out of the shipping box with a 6" scale on top:
I started today by cleaning out the enclosure, removing the backpanel and giving everything a wipedown. Then I stripped off all of the parts from the backpanel (DIN rail, wireways, etc.) Paint may come later, but it's not a priority now. I decided I would mount the enclosure to the mill before I did the interior layout and wiring, just to give myself some motivation.
My mill has a ProtoTRAK retrofit and that control cabinet lives on the right side of the mill's base casting, so I decided to put the VFD enclosure on the left side. Plus, that puts it closer to the motor wiring. The base casting doesn't have a large enough flat area on the side to accommodate the enclosure, so I have to build it out with a frame.
I have a stockpile of 80/20 extrusions and fittings, so I figured that would be a great frame. I started with two horizontal sections about 16" long. I drilled four holes in the casting with my hand drill and tapped them. A couple of clearance holes in the 80/20 and those were mounted:
Now I needed to cut down some L brackets that would attach to the vertical sections. I haven't gotten to wiring in my horizontal bandsaw yet, so I grabbed my portaband and used the horizontal's vice. Now I have my L brackets ready to go:
Two 36" vertical sections are next:
Enclosure in place and mounted to the vertical sections:
I punched two holes in the side for the master on button and the emergency kill switch. Mounted them up:
OK, now I'm moving on to the interior layout and wiring. I sketched out my schematic over the last week and have been ordering parts. The easiest way for me to work is to do a layout of all the parts with my schematic next to me, and go back and forth between the two:
Here's how the backpanel is shaping up so far. There is the VFD, braking resistor, enclosure fans, fan relay, thermostat for the fans, fuse holders, terminal blocks, enclosure power contactor and ground bar. I'm missing the VFD's fuses.
That's about as far as I got today. Next up will be mounting everything to the backpanel, mounting fans to the enclosure, mounting the backpanel into the enclosure and wiring.